How often have we told people to
follow safety instructions and they have gone ahead violating the instructions
which resulted in incidents / accidents.
How often we have sent our
employees for training programs and expected that once trained they will be
competent to perform, but later found no change / improvement in their way of
work.
The traditional system of managing safety function is top down, wherein we create a Safety policy, introduce methods and processess, provide training to employees, issue PPEs, conduct tool box talks and random safety inspections / audits, initiate disciplinary actions against violators.
Has these traditional methods helped to bring about the necessary results ??? NO. 90 percent of the accidents are caused by unsafe acts (behaviour). Do we measure the number of unsafe behaviours that leads to near miss incidents / minor accidents / major accidents.
The traditional system fails to
take into account the factors that influence behaviour of a person on the work
and the factors that re-inforce learning.
Years of research and study on the above factors has resulted in a a
path breaking concept Behaviour Based Safety (BBS), introduced in the late 80's. The basic idea is to try and apply the findings of Behavioural Psychology to the safety related issues in the real world.
BBS is a bottom-up
approach with the top management support to bring about a change in the safety
culture in the organisation. BBS focuses on what people do, analyse why they do
it and suggest simple interventions to bring about safe behaviour in the work
place. To be effective this intervention should have the commitment of the top
leader of the organisation and support and guidance of other senior managers in
the organisation.
We will discuss more on this in the subsequent blogs.
